Suppose that you are in a project trying to build a time machine. You correctly reason that a time machine will require buttons and dials for you to control it. You go off and make a load of nice buttons, dials, date counters and clock faces. You have correctly identified that X needs done, and are doing X, but X isn't the hard part or limiting factor, and isn't very useful.
You are working on an AI project, you correctly deduce that your AI will run on a computer, and computers need to be plugged in, so you go and practice wiring up plugs. I feel that you are looking in much the same direction when you talk about operating systems, cache ect. These are not the difficult part of the problem.